Total Solar Eclipse - Indianapolis
When I learned that the total solar eclipse would be visible from Indianapolis, I started getting people involved. Within 24 hrs, we had an AirBnB booked and a 48 hour plan to avoid traffic. After having a few people bail, we had a car rented.
In Indianapolis, we stayed at a BnB just south of Butler University. On the day of the eclipse, Butler U opened their observatory for people to view, their astronomy department had tons of student volunteers with telescopes, astro-cameras, and a ton of different experiments you could look at during partiality. I took a photo every 5 minutes at 400mm. You could visibly see the sunspots that day as the moon came in to view. Below is a photo from a few weeks earlier.
About 1 minute before totality, I took the ND100000 filter off my camera and put on the lens cap.
20 seconds before totality, I took the cap off and started taking bracketed photos rapid fire. My camera was set to take 9 exposures 1 stop apart. The unfortunate thing was, I don’t know if I bumped the focus ring, or if the filters affect focus somehow, but I was completely off from where I wanted to be. All of my photos at the start of totality are out of focus.
During totality, I fixed focus and kept firing off shots. I had a remote shutter & had positioned my camera so that I wouldn’t need to readjust during totality. So I was able to shoot and stare at the giant alien looking ball in the sky. There was a prominence visible with the naked eye on the lower part of the eclipse.
At the end of totality, I continued pressing the shutter button. All in all, I think I took around 450 photos, all to build the composite I wanted at the end, and to stack an HDR photo of the eclipse afterwards. One of my main goals was to be able to see Bailey’s Beads.
Total Solar Eclipse with a prominence visible on the lower and right sides of the eclipse.
A shot of Bailey’s Beads. The visible light is shining through valleys on the moon’s surface
A false color shot of the eclipse. This is 9 photos stacked and each layer has a different color. Starting with the longest exposure being red, the next shortest being orange, then yellow, and so on.
My composite image of the eclipse & the stages of partiality.
(the bottom photos are the same as the top, just flipped)
